WD green drives were really never designed for the constant read/write cycle that a TiVo goes through, which is why they aren't recommended for replacement.

While I think it's unlikely it would "wear out in a few months" the drive definitely could succumb to errors more quickly and a bigger concern would be heat and noise as well as possibly running into performance limits if streaming lots of HD simultaneously.

There could be some drive profile changes that could be made to improve it, but I've only used WD green as data backup drives for the past couple of years so I'm not up to speed on what might be possible.

Uh, then why has TiVo been using AV-GP drives all this time? They are GreenPower drives as well, with an additional AV-rating. That's what the "GP" means in "AV-GP".

Don't take it the wrong way. But, as you say, you're not up to speed on this. Before the AV-GP drives fell drastically in price, everybody was using the standard GreenPower drives, without the AV rating (less those who had the extra money to spend, and wanted the AV-GP).

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*Coming in 2016: TiVo introduces OneTiVo with OneWay - There will no longer be any pesky choices to make. TiVo will determine what you watch, when, in what order, and content source.

WD green drives were really never designed for the constant read/write cycle that a TiVo goes through, which is why they aren't recommended for replacement.

While I think it's unlikely it would "wear out in a few months" the drive definitely could succumb to errors more quickly and a bigger concern would be heat and noise as well as possibly running into performance limits if streaming lots of HD simultaneously.

There could be some drive profile changes that could be made to improve it, but I've only used WD green as data backup drives for the past couple of years so I'm not up to speed on what might be possible.

I've never seen any real difference between Green, Blue and Black WDs in a TiVo except for the heat factor. The AV rating is more about noise level than performance IMO, and every modern drive is designed to run 24/7.

I'm sitting 6 feet from 4 TiVos running Blues and the only thing I can hear is the fan on my UPS. YMMV.

I've never seen any real difference between Green, Blue and Black WDs in a TiVo except for the heat factor. The AV rating is more about noise level than performance IMO, and every modern drive is designed to run 24/7.

I'm sitting 6 feet from 4 TiVos running Blues and the only thing I can hear is the fan on my UPS. YMMV.

I had installed and ultimately removed both a WD Green and WD Blue from a Series 3 TiVo because the seek noise was pretty noticeable to me. I put in a Samsung Spinpoint which was tolerable but when that TiVo was moved to the master bedroom the noise was enough that I put the factory drive back into that particular unit.

I think it's relative and I think that if someone can tolerate the noise and cooling is not a concern they can probably put in whatever they want. I'm not sure though if drives that have profiles designed more for traditional desktop use in which they do more reading and less writing will have more issues over time as ones running firmware designed for NAS, surveillance or DVR type use.

Sorry, no. But if there are instructions I can follow them. I have MFS Live CD if that will work. My background is in programming automation devices for the manufacturing of hard drives and others.

PapaArt

There's whole threads full of the instructions (but it's tough to navigate and find what you need) here. Wikipedia has a nice page on GNU DD_RESCUE, as well as links to similar utilities, and the sites that host the documentation and instruction. If you need help, we'll cross that bridge, if/when you get there. ggieseke said his DVRBARS program can even copy a blank drive, so I'm guessing it won't be necessary.

__________________
*Coming in 2016: TiVo introduces OneTiVo with OneWay - There will no longer be any pesky choices to make. TiVo will determine what you watch, when, in what order, and content source.

Just ordered a Roamio Basic and a 3TB WD30EURS from Amazon.. This will replace my two 1TB S3s w/Lifetime.. Looking forward to 1 TiVo with all my videos in one place, four tuners and an RF remote so I can control it from all the TVs without dealing with IR distribution..

Just have to wait until Wednesday to get it and start the upgrade....

PS. Since I used a Amazon Store card, I also got 6mos interest free.... cool.

I had installed and ultimately removed both a WD Green and WD Blue from a Series 3 TiVo because the seek noise was pretty noticeable to me. I put in a Samsung Spinpoint which was tolerable but when that TiVo was moved to the master bedroom the noise was enough that I put the factory drive back into that particular unit.

I think it's relative and I think that if someone can tolerate the noise and cooling is not a concern they can probably put in whatever they want. I'm not sure though if drives that have profiles designed more for traditional desktop use in which they do more reading and less writing will have more issues over time as ones running firmware designed for NAS, surveillance or DVR type use.

Have you ever tried setting the acoustic management settings on any of those drives? Some can be set, some can't. I use an old version of Hitachi Feature Tool to do it on any drive that allows it to be set. I actually disable it, and even in my bedroom, other ambient noise still exceeds the noise the drive makes with no acoustic management. Others set it to the max. YMMV, of course.

__________________
*Coming in 2016: TiVo introduces OneTiVo with OneWay - There will no longer be any pesky choices to make. TiVo will determine what you watch, when, in what order, and content source.

I had installed and ultimately removed both a WD Green and WD Blue from a Series 3 TiVo because the seek noise was pretty noticeable to me. I put in a Samsung Spinpoint which was tolerable but when that TiVo was moved to the master bedroom the noise was enough that I put the factory drive back into that particular unit.

I think it's relative and I think that if someone can tolerate the noise and cooling is not a concern they can probably put in whatever they want. I'm not sure though if drives that have profiles designed more for traditional desktop use in which they do more reading and less writing will have more issues over time as ones running firmware designed for NAS, surveillance or DVR type use.

I used to have excellent hearing. Try working 30 years in a noisy manufacturing plant and hearing hard drive noise would be a big plus.

Product replacement because of misuse, accident, lightning damage, unauthorized repair, or other cause not within the control of TiVo Inc. Please note that removing the cover of the DVR for any reason voids the warranty.

Before anyone jumps in here, I am not saying that TiVo will enforce this clause even if knew what you had done, just that it exists and that, unless you can remove the drive and put it back in w/o removing the cover, doing so does indeed void the warranty.

I used to have excellent hearing. Try working 30 years in a noisy manufacturing plant and hearing hard drive noise would be a big plus.

I actually have worked in telephone and network switch rooms for most of my career and have quite a lot of hearing loss in the mid-band. My hearing of high frequency noise is still quite acute though, which is why I am easily bothered by things like noisy hard drive seek.

In any event, most users probably would not be bothered, and the biggest risk as someone else pointed out would be thermal issues caused by using a drive that dissipates a lot more heat than the drive the device ships with.

Before anyone jumps in here, I am not saying that TiVo will enforce this clause even if knew what you had done, just that it exists and that, unless you can remove the drive and put it back in w/o removing the cover, doing so does indeed void the warranty.

or at least do so without destroying that label... I was able to open/close my S3s and that void label never moved since the label was never stuck to anything but the outer cover... hehehe

Before anyone jumps in here, I am not saying that TiVo will enforce this clause even if knew what you had done, just that it exists and that, unless you can remove the drive and put it back in w/o removing the cover, doing so does indeed void the warranty.

Well, technically Apple tells you that opening up their computers similarly voids your warranty, but I know many people who have hacked their Macs with different parts and never heard of one of them getting grief from Apple if they made a warranty claim.

If TiVo is really worried about it they will put a "warranty void if broken" type of seal on the retail units. Until then, they have no way of knowing (unless they are logging to the flash drive via log file and will go through the trouble of investigating it) if you replaced the drive, especially if you put the original back in before having it services.

Just ordered a Roamio Basic and a 3TB WD30EURS from Amazon.. This will replace my two 1TB S3s w/Lifetime.. Looking forward to 1 TiVo with all my videos in one place, four tuners and an RF remote so I can control it from all the TVs without dealing with IR distribution..

Just have to wait until Wednesday to get it and start the upgrade....

PS. Since I used a Amazon Store card, I also got 6mos interest free.... cool.

If you use the WD green power saver drive do you have to enable the park feature in order to have the drive not wear itself out after a couple of months?

The AV drives like WD20EURS come with Intellipark already disabled, but the regular Green drives like a WD20EZRX will come with it set for 8 seconds, so in the past you have to disable it or set it higher to get a Tivo to boot past the first screen, we dont know if you still have to do that yet. With a Tivo the heads will never park anyhow, they write 24/7.

If you use the WD green power saver drive do you have to enable the park feature in order to have the drive not wear itself out after a couple of months?

Near as I can tell from what I read, keeping the intellipark feature enabled, at least with the default setting, can reduce the service life of the drive as there are a limited number of times it can park. This is if it is going in a PC.

In a TiVo, the only time it comes into play is on a soft boot. It never parks during normal operation. It does get parked when it goes idle during the boot process and it does not get "un-parked" fast enough when queried by the TiVo.

At least that is my understanding of the issue but there is some annecdotal evidence that it has been addressed and is no longer an issue.

If TiVo is really worried about it they will put a "warranty void if broken" type of seal on the retail units. Until then, they have no way of knowing (unless they are logging to the flash drive via log file and will go through the trouble of investigating it) if you replaced the drive, especially if you put the original back in before having it services.

I believe they can tell once you connect your upgraded tivo to the network. At a minimum they can tell how many recording hours your new hdd provides.

or at least do so without destroying that label... I was able to open/close my S3s and that void label never moved since the label was never stuck to anything but the outer cover... hehehe

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmpage2

Well, technically Apple tells you that opening up their computers similarly voids your warranty, but I know many people who have hacked their Macs with different parts and never heard of one of them getting grief from Apple if they made a warranty claim.

If TiVo is really worried about it they will put a "warranty void if broken" type of seal on the retail units. Until then, they have no way of knowing (unless they are logging to the flash drive via log file and will go through the trouble of investigating it) if you replaced the drive, especially if you put the original back in before having it services.

As noted above, they at least used to do that very thing.

Besides, the Roamio has built-in wireless. Didn't you know about the built-in camera? The NSA insisted.

What's the deal with 4TB hdd prices anyway? I bought 2 seagate external 4 TB drives for $140 each several months ago. There was an instant rebate involved, but still I didn't think it would take this long for that price to be common. Seems like it's a long way away now. Wish I had bought a spare now! I would love to have a 4TB drive in my tivo.

Thanks for the research early adopters! Looking forward to seeing the rest of the story unfold.

If you use the WD green power saver drive do you have to enable the park feature in order to have the drive not wear itself out after a couple of months?

Do you already have a drive you plan to use? If not then my suggestion is to just go ahead and get one of the AV drives and then you can just pop it in and not worry with it. There wont be that much difference in the price and an AV drive is designed for a DVR/Tivo.

What's the deal with 4TB hdd prices anyway? I bought 2 seagate external 4 TB drives for $140 each several months ago. There was an instant rebate involved, but still I didn't think it would take this long for that price to be common. Seems like it's a long way away now. Wish I had bought a spare now! I would love to have a 4TB drive in my tivo.

Thanks for the research early adopters! Looking forward to seeing the rest of the story unfold.

Yeah, I know.. I really wanted a 4TB but the price was $199 no matter where I looked and I either had to pay for Tax, shipping or both...

That is one of the main reasons I just went with the WD 3TB, got it for $138 w/Prime and the 6mos interest free... Since I only had 2TB already this is still 1TB more video storage...

If the 3TB does not work.. no loss, I will just use it in my Drobo's (which currently only have 1.5 & 2TBs). Now, if I could only hook a Drobo up as the external drive.... hehe

Just ordered a Roamio Basic and a 3TB WD30EURS from Amazon.. This will replace my two 1TB S3s w/Lifetime.. Looking forward to 1 TiVo with all my videos in one place, four tuners and an RF remote so I can control it from all the TVs without dealing with IR distribution..

So, based on what has been documented here so far, a year down the road and I find I'm running low on space on my Plus, I should be able to buy a new larger drive, remove my old drive, plug both into my PC, drag and drop everything from my old HD to my new HD, plug the new one into my Tivo, go through setup, then be back to where I was with my same recorded shows and more space?